The danger in banning the possession of child pornography (or any sort of electronic data, really) is that it's extremely easy to entice someone innocent into clicking a link to child pornography, or to plant it on their system maliciously. There have been several cases in which this was either attempted or successful in the US, and groups of trolls took pleasure for a brief time in finding FBI dragnet links posted to child pornography forums to entrap their members and posting these links elsewhere in an attempt to get innocent people raided.

I agree that child pornography (especially of pre-pubescent children) is disgusting and indicative of an issue with whomever possesses it that should probably be taken care of, but I also think that criminalizing "the possession of child pornography" really is a dangerous route legally. Here in the US we've seen children prosecuted for sending nude pictures to each other on their cell phones, over-18s prosecuted for keeping photos of ex-girlfriends from when they were 17, and even individuals prosecuted for possessing child pornography in unallocated disk sectors. Imagine buying a system off eBay that someone didn't randomly erase and going to prison for it!

bri3d is right. When you want to ban something, who's right is it to bring the banhammers? The government? What a fantastic fuckup that turned out to be.

The american government is too broke to afford a street vendor's hotdog, yet they feel they have the right to bust into peoples homes and do whatever the hell they want for pretty much any reason whatsoever. That's Freedom, with a capitol F.

Twenty people were arrested this week for posting child pornography on a mobile phone web site that was set up by a 17-year-old high school student, while Japan was shocked earlier this year at the arrest of a mother who took indecent images of her infant son and sold them via the internet.

Well that's 21 arrests right there. So there must be some kind of law on the books already, this new one is likely too expensive or there is some section that is unfavorable to the public. I'm not surprised at all by the Japanese decision.

sybrfreq wrote:The american government is too broke to afford a street vendor's hotdog, yet they feel they have the right to bust into peoples homes and do whatever the hell they want for pretty much any reason whatsoever. That's Freedom, with a capitol F.

You don't get it, sybr. The american government is not too broke to afford anything. There's plenty of money, all in the hands of Wall Street traders, investment banking CEO accounts and insurance company piles of gold. There is so much emphasis on stupid crap because the general population is so easily distracted by idiotic non-issues. "Child" pornography (who was queen of england, married to John at twelve or something, typical of the time ?), abortion (right to life puh-lease), more money spent on prisons in the "land of the free" than on education, billions of dollars and thousands of people murdered over a witch hunt and documented FBI lie about a plant ? It's all a distraction and y'all are so easily distracted.

When the stupid American populace bothers to figure out that the finance "industry" has robbed them blind once again and actually does something about it (such as hanging the thieving bastards from trees until we have Gucci-clad forests) rather than spending their efforts railing against liberals and socialists and nonbleevers, then you'll see progress.

You people are nuts, have no sense of priorities and get exactly the government and economy you deserve. "We need wealthy people to give jobs to poor people" haysoos h kristos. The place is doomed.

hamei wrote:You people are nuts, have no sense of priorities and get exactly the government and economy you deserve. "We need wealthy people to give jobs to poor people" haysoos h kristos. The place is doomed.

hamei wrote:You people are nuts, have no sense of priorities and get exactly the government and economy you deserve. "We need wealthy people to give jobs to poor people" haysoos h kristos. The place is doomed.

We need Janitor Man(tm)!

Urope too! Urope too!

old continental toast is fried

london is plain misery, berlin tries to breath, kids have started grabbing stones

Bringing this back up as there's been challenges to the laws in Japan in recent years.

A few things:

Loli and Shota Anime/Manga/Art are considered "Simulated pornography" by a lot of countries.

I don't consider these to be the same as child porn because no actual children are involved, and people I know whom are into it, (I am personally not, as I prefer mature women - I won't even date women who are much younger than who I am because I like the allure of older women) are not sexually attracted to actual children. To them, Loli and Shota are something entirely different.

My philosophy is that banning everything we find obscene, be it drugs, art, etc. ESPECIALLY when it is victimless, such as shota/loli, is ultimately going to drive an underground market for it.

The second thing is, where do we draw the line? A lot of Japanese anime involves jokes of various natures directed towards people who may be underage. Yoko Ritona, from Gurren Lagann? She's FOURTEEN. Hachikuji from Bakemonogatari? EIGHT. Clearly, both of these characters have sexual overtones and jokes surrounding their personal character. Should be ban them too?

I think this is a potential slippery slope. The guy who got arrested in Canada recently for ordering a loli blowup doll, that is fucking ridiculous.